Ecofeminism is at the crossroads of the environmental struggle and the protection of women’s rights. It’s a major current trend in the feminist movement and its Western figures are numerous. However, their ideas are largely inspired by the indigenous movements of the 1970s.  

“Rethinking politics to get out of the logic of domination over nature and women”, “establishing philosophical and sociological links between the system of patriarchal domination and the degradation of ecosystems”: this is what current eco-feminism advocates. Naomi Klein, Starhawk, Val Plumwood and Vandana Shiva are world-renowned figures of this movement. Their values, although popular today in the West, are not new. The term ecofeminism was coined in 1974 by the French writer Françoise d’Eaubonne, who noted the link between the destruction of nature and the domination suffered by women in “Feminism or Death”. But eco-feminist struggles for a long time before that. They are inspired in part by indigenous struggles movements, which began to struggle as early as the 1970s.

Indigenous women present from the very first environmental struggles

In the late 1960s, Madonna Thunder Hawk of the Lakota Sioux people, also known as Warrior Woman, co-founded the American Indian Movement. This one confronts the FBI and the police during 71 days in 1973 in the occupation of Wounded Knee. During this period, between 150 and 300 American Indians of the Lakota miniconjou tribe were killed by the United States army while fighting for the recognition of their national sovereignty. Today, Madonna Hawk fights in Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline, alongside young activists. They are fighting against the creation of a pipeline running through the Sioux Reservation.

Saving Mother Earth

Indigenous peoples are all the more legitimate to be ambassadors for the environmental cause, since they live in a territory they have occupied for millennia.

For the American Indians, Mother Earth is sacred. If so many indigenous women defend their territory, it is because their relationship to the land is maternal. To violate the land is to rape a woman. “Just as our mother gives us life, Mother Earth gives life to all the creations of the earth”. Water is vital because it keeps the earth alive. The earth nourishes men as the mother nourishes the children from her womb.   

For the eco-feminist movement, the destruction of nature and the oppression of women are linked. In North Dakota, the exploitation of shale gas, which began in 2006, has led to a 200% increase in the crime rate, due to the arrival of a mass influx of men in search of money. Violence against women nearly tripled, and police failed to protect Native American women, the main victims, who became easy prey for drug dealers, sex offenders, and prostitution.

Consequences of a large-scale extractivist policy. Women are affected in their bodies as much as nature.

Non-violent struggles that bear fruit

Indigenous women are not self-proclaimed eco-feminists or feminists, but their actions speak for them, like the Sioux of the United States who fight against extractivism, the Kichwa of Ecuador, ambassadors of the rights of nature, or the indigenous women of Indonesia, who fight against oil palms.

They carry alternatives, lead collective struggles, and have experienced recent victories:

At Standing Rock, in July 2020, Sioux insurgents obtained the temporary closure of the Dakota access pipeline project. In September, members of Congress, tribal organizations and the state government joined the call for its permanent shutdown.

In Indonesia, the government is preparing a redistribution of 12.7 million hectares of land to indigenous communities and forest dwellers thanks to pressure from indigenous peoples and their presence on social networks.

In 2012, the Kichwas won a historic trial at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The Ecuadorian State was condemned to pay 1.4 million dollars to the indigenous people for having authorized oil exploitation missions on their territory without consulting them. More recently, they presented a request to UNESCO in order to have their “living forest” recognized and protected.

They advocate a non-violent struggle, a language of truth and transparency.

For their part, the Navajo Diné people are also leading a peaceful struggle for the preservation of the environment.

For this people of North America, mainly located in Arizona, the land can be healed. When he evokes the harmony of the world, he uses the word “Hozho”. This term corresponds to the initial state of the world, when the first men and women emerged from the bowels of the earth. According to them, the balance of the world is challenged by the destruction of the environment.

In the documentary film “The Song that Heals the Earth”, by Lorenza Garcia about the Navajo people, we can see the women singing for the earth, with the aim of reconciliation between man and nature. They sometimes gather in numbers to sing together, without men. They create the songs of tomorrow in order to heal the future wounds.

A documentary on Three Aboriginal eco-feminists can be found on Vimeo.